Fergie Jenkins' Open Letter to Pete Rose

[Greenblood94]

I found this this morning on FoxSports.com. Truer words were never written...

In a letter first obtained by Sporting News Radio, Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins offers these words to Pete Rose.

Pete,

I have been thinking about your problems since you recanted your 14-year denial of the charges that you bet on major league baseball games as a manager. The media has been calling me for my opinion because I am in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I am being asked if you deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. They are calling other Hall of Famers with this same question. We don't deserve this.

How can you do this Pete? You are getting some bad advice on how to conduct your campaign to return to the good graces of baseball and the public.

How can you upstage the institution you so desperately want to join by allowing your book publisher to launch your confessional book so close to the announcement of this year's Hall of Fame selections?

Your future lies totally with Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, rather than with what the public thinks of your new book.

Hey, we didn't make the millions these guys are making today, but surely you can find a way to make some money without embarrassing baseball. You broke a major rule on betting on baseball. Rule 21 is in place to protect baseball's integrity. Rule 21 is posted on every Major League Baseball clubhouse door.

After you were caught betting, where was your conscience all these years? Why didn't you come forward with your admission of guilt soon after your lifetime ban? The time for that was the following year or the year after, before your denial became a way of life for you. Why did you let the lie get bigger and bigger?

You have been taking advantage of all the hard work those of us have put in to the sport of baseball to attain a place in the Hall of Fame. You have denied yourself a place along with us because you didn't confess early on.

You supposedly have come clean, but I don't see where you have told the world you have repented enough to donate the profits from the sale of the book to Gamblers Anonymous. No, instead you are going to profit personally from your book's sales. Many states have passed laws that prevent convicted felons from profiting from the sale of books they write about their crimes. Why should you be any different?

Knowing what I know now, I will never support your reinstatement to the game or your bid for the Hall.

Finally, I don't want to read your new book. But tell me this, when do we find out if you bet on baseball when you were a player? Do we find that out in your next book?

And now that I have had time to put this into words, I just hope the media will stop asking your fellow athletes what your conduct was all about.

Fergie